Cyberhero

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Talk story about a reading in Central Park given by William Gibson, a science-fiction author, with fellow-author Steve Erickson. "Cyberspace" is Gibson's famous term for the new computer universe. In his books, (he's been writing for over a decade now), cyberspace is a strange, extravagent place. Someone in the front row called it "a kind of shared public hallucination." Gibson did not invent the phrase "virtual reality," but his novels anticipated the concept. In Gibson's "Cyberspace" trilogy, "cowboys" access cyberspace using special skull implants. "They're like hackers," the front-row expert explained. "They get in and fly among the databases." Nearly a million copies have been sold of the books in the trilogy--"Neuromancer," "Count Zero," and "Mona Lisa Overdrive." Gibson is about to publish another novel, "Virtual Light," and will be making more appearances in Manhattan later this month. Posters advertising those events make him look goggle-eyed, even fearsome. But in the flesh he looked fresh-faced and spindly. Gibson is 6'6". He read for about twenty-five minutes, from "Virtual Light." He later described it as a darkly comic urban detective story with social commentary thrown in. Gibson lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, but he grew up in southwestern Virginia, and still drags his vowels when he talks. When the reading was over, he caught a plane back to Vancouver, to finish a film script.